Keane to apologise not a joke ???

from soccernet.com

Sunday, May 26, 2002

'No dignity and precious little respect'
Mick McCarthy


McCarthy: Sent Keane home
(Allsport)
EXCLUSIVE: Life is all about standards. You are brought up to treat fellow human beings with dignity, respect, common decency and honesty.

That was the way my family reared me in Yorkshire and the way my Irish-born father, Charlie, taught me to behave as a proud Irishman.

Do unto others as you would do unto yourself, he always said. And he was right.

I try to live my life as fairly and as honestly as I can. Some will say I have set myself high standards, others will suggest that I sometimes expect too much from those around me.

Roy Keane is a man of high standards. He demands the best and, at Manchester United, he always gets it. That is to be expected from the biggest club in Europe.

In Saipan last Thursday night, Roy Keane was asked to explain why he felt we did not provide him with the best World Cup preparation possible.

That is all I did at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. I asked Roy Keane to tell me and the Irish squad what exactly was causing him to run to the press like a scalded cat just hours after I had accepted his decision to renege on his international retirement.

He treated me with honesty in his reply. Sadly, there was no dignity and precious little respect in his choice of language.

Some of the words Roy Keane finally used in his response to me, after six years of working closely together, have made the papers. Others, no doubt, will make his book when he comes clean later this year. Good luck to him.

I will not use them here because they do not deserve to see air again.

What I will tell you is that I have never had to listen to such foul-mouthed abuse from any footballer. I have never witnessed such an attack from any human being.

I have had rows with Roy before but never at this level. It was vicious, it was unprecedented and it was unjust. I did not deserve it and I was not going to take it.

When Roy had finished his rant, I threw him out of the World Cup squad. That is not news, the whole globe seems to have spent the last four days deciding whether I was right or wrong.

I was right, no matter what some people back in Dublin - people who were nowhere near that hotel room - have to say on the subject.

Roy Keane left me with no choice but to sack him last Thursday. The honesty he displayed in that hotel room was obnoxious, degrading to me and downright rude.

'I looked at him, as he waded in with one expletive after another, and I asked myself if this was my captain, if this was one of my players?

Was this a man who could serve Ireland as a role model for our kids, for the youngsters who dream of following him onto the World Cup stage? The answer to all of that, judging by his behaviour in front of all the other players and the back-room team in Saipan, is no.

And it hurts me to say that more than any of you will ever know.

I did not travel to Saipan to force Roy Keane out of the World Cup. I did not pick that Pacific Island because I knew it would drive Roy up the wall and back down again.

I have never treated him with anything other than the respect his God-given talent deserves. What did I get in return? A week of misery that ended with my captain forcing me into a corner from which there was no turning back for either of us.

He will miss the World Cup Finals and the World Cup Finals will be the poorer. The Irish team will be the poorer for his absence and he may, someday, regret the fact that he is not with the Saipan 22.

So far, there is nothing coming from Roy to suggest he misses us. We don't miss him here in Japan, not yet anyway.

I have 22 players with me (I would still love to get Colin Healy into the squad) who want to play for Ireland, who want to play for me. They have not waited six years to tell me what they really think of me, they have not waited to shower me with abuse.

They did not complain about the training pitch in Saipan. Why? Because they accepted it when I put my hands up and apologised for the fact that it was not up to the standard I expected.

I was told the pitch would be up to scratch when the locals laid it. I told Roy that I agreed with him when he had first criticised it. I also told him that it was not the be-all and end-all of our time in Saipan.

We were there to work, rest and play ahead of the World Cup. We had played two games the week before and I felt the players needed somewhere to unwind a little before they entered the circus that is the World Cup.

I also felt that Roy would welcome some anonymity in a part of the world where football means little or nothing, where it has rarely made the headlines - until now.

I was thinking of him as much as anybody when I picked that five-star beach-side hotel on the edge of the Pacific.

I thought he would like the fact that he could go out without fear of autograph hunters. Bigger fool me.

Roy, unlike the other players, never understood the purpose of Saipan.

We were not there to fine tune the World Cup bid. We were there to sweat a little, play a little and bond a lot. The hard work would follow, as it has, in Izumo at a state-of-the-art training facility.

Everyone was happy with that, except Roy. And what really gets me is his lack of honesty when he stopped me in the hotel foyer on Tuesday night and told me he wanted out of the World Cup.

There was no mention of pitches, press barbecues or late training kit then. He told me he had personal reasons to want out and I told him to go away and think about it while I had a shower.

He came back and said his mind was made up. I asked him if he had a problem with me and he said 'no'. I asked him if the training was wrong and he denied it. I asked him if he had something against the other players. Again, he replied in the negative.

By the end of Tuesday night I had written Roy off and asked Colin Healy to join the World Cup squad.

That night the phone never stopped, despite the fact that I had asked the decision to be kept quiet.

The next morning, after a dozen missed calls, I was told that Roy wanted to stay after all. I agreed, then said sorry to Colin Healy.

My captain was staying and I wanted him to stay, I wanted him to be part of the Irish team he had driven to the World Cup.

On Wednesday morning, at training on that pitch, Roy was as good as gold. He was happy, he was content, he was scheming. Within an hour or so of our training session coming to an end, he was baring his soul and all his criticism of my way of doing things to the Irish Times.

When the article appeared the next day, I found myself answering all the old Roy Keane questions again. The enjoyment had gone from the World Cup and we weren't even in Japan. I had to act. I had to finally ask Roy, after six years of walking on eggs, to come clean.

I did it in front of the players because this was something that had to be done in unison, as a group.

I did it because I wanted to solve his grievances with the help of everyone, one for all and all for one.

Things didn't work out like that, as you know. Roy is gone now, the headline writers are working overtime and I am still confused as to why he asked to return to the squad on Wednesday morning then wrote the article that would drive him out that same afternoon.

I will probably never know. Roy Keane is history now. He will never again get the chance to talk to me like he did last Thursday. No human will talk to me like that again.

We will move on, we will do Ireland proud in Japan these next two weeks, without the best player we have. That was his doing and no-one else's. Roy Keane drove us to the World Cup and drove himself out.

You should all know that. And you should all ask yourselves what sort of role model he is now.

You can't argue with most of what McCarthy says there. Keane himself has admitted that after what he said, McCarthy had no option. McCarthy knows what he is dealing with, he knows there is zero chance of Keane apologising, and so he knows that he is never going to be faced with the dilemma of whether or not he should take him back.